Closing the Gaps in Education: Cultivating Physical and Virtual Interactions in the Learning Process.

Gerry White, Dean of Academic Technology, ECPI University

Gerry White, Dean of Academic Technology, ECPI University

There have always been gaps in education, whether environmental or deep within individual perspectives. The flow of information between teacher and student can be elusive. Still, we have been mending these disparities and finding our way for millennia. Despite corrective strategies, some people are just too shy to speak up in a physical classroom. Others may need extra help and be afraid to ask for it, or they may feel a question they have is stupid or irrelevant. Even when everyone else might have the same question, they do not feel comfortable asking. These are but a few of the gaps we have found so far. For decades though, technology has been a bridge that helps us fill these in. Virtual environments, social networks, and web systems have offered new channels of communication, giving students and teachers fresh ways to share and learn.  Still, with all the spaces that technology has helps us fill, might there be new fissures that it opens?

For years, we have researched, developed, and leveraged technologies to better meet our students' needs and improve their learning environments. Just within this century alone, there have been the streaming video and podcast revolutions, the virtual games of Second Life, and additional game worlds made with Unity, and other gaming engines. There are complete virtual classroom environments, in which our students engage and interact.  We now also have interactive textbooks, apps, more games, mobile technologies, and robust learning management systems like Moodle, Blackboard, and Canvas. We have gamified and virtualized many parts of the learning process itself, and this has bridged several of the chasms we have discovered.

Without question, these new tools have brought us a long way from simply writing on the board and having real-time discussions in our physical classrooms. However, those in-class discussions, where people share and challenge each other‘s ideas, are some of the richest dynamics in education and communication itself.

When everyone is together in a room sharing the same space, breathing the same air, seeing and hearing ideas from a slightly different perspective, magic happens– magic that makes these real life interactions constructive and critical to knowledge and discourse itself. A confused look, a turn of the eye, or even a tight or fidgety body, lets a teacher know, to some extent, what the student is thinking. Maybe he is confused, so we clarify, review, or even explain the concept in another way. Perhaps, we can see that he has something to say, something important, but maybe he is too self-conscious to raise his hand. Thus, we give him a runway and ask, “what do you think, Kelly?”  Then, as his eyes light up and he shares an idea that is heard and reverberated in the ears of every person in the room, he gains confidence; everyone benefits.  

This butterfly effect happens naturally in the organic classroom and has been one of the keys to the evolution of knowledge and learning throughout the ages. These empirical interactions and feelings go back thousands of years and have largely been unchanged. From the schools that Charlemagne’s decedents began, to some of the first universities in Europe, America, and across the world, this modality of learning has been everything, perhaps the only way.

But last year with the outbreak of the current pandemic, new fissures began to surface and had to be closed remotely. And, what has made this new remote environment so successful in such a dire time in our history, were the synchronous, real-time interactions of the classroom. Today, with video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WizIQ, we can see and hear our students in real-time. They can also see us and listen to a lecture, take notes about what is being written, drawn on the board, or shown in a presentation. The teacher can virtually create groups, so students can share information and experiences, take on group challenges and assignments, and even study together outside the constraints of the physical classroom. The curriculum is in the cloud. There are no more copies to make of assignment sheets or lesson plans. All the teacher’s notes and presentations are available for students to review and absorb on-demand. While technology has filled in some holes, many that have existed in traditional learning remain: shy students, people who may be a little afraid to ask questions or participate in discussions, or students who need to be able to reach and grab the teacher right there in the room.

As such, the landscape for learning has forever changed. Technology has accomplished a great deal in giving us a classroom that is ‘safe’ from pathogens, but at the same time, ‘safe’ from the full empirical interactions that were once crucial to learning. There is a new gap, one that is physical. There are tradeoffs we have been making since the first of these technologies took root in our classrooms, but there are always tradeoffs. Remote learning is for the reticent student just that, remote. On the smaller screen, facial and body language may be too discreet to notice; the instructor may appear inaccessible.

Aristotle once wrote, “The more you know, the more you realize you don't know.” That is still true today. Often as we fix one issue, another arises. So, there may always be gaps to fill in education. Whether we have a student at home who is more comfortable sharing ideas remotely, or a student in the classroom who needs help but is afraid to ask, each modality has its strengths and weaknesses. We need balance.

Perhaps one day these chasms too may be closed— maybe with an interface that can communicate directly with our brains, immersing us in environments almost indistinguishable from the person-to-person empirical world we have always known. It may be that a tool like Neuralink, a system being developed by Elon Musk and his team, could be that bridge. Nonetheless, bio-cyber interface technologies of this magnitude are at least decades away. So for now, as always, we will keep innovating, listening, and closing any gaps we find between us and our students and knowledge itself, whether sitting in a classroom or sharing one we create together using technology.

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Microsoft

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